Note: The following are excerpts from an article by the Wall Street Journal.
Megan J. Brennan Sees ‘Plenty of Upside’ for Financially Strapped Postal Service
Ms. Brennan, who has spent nearly three decades at the agency since her yearlong stint as a letter carrier, is on deck to become the nation’s first woman postmaster general. She faces a tough challenge: transforming the Postal Service to meet the biggest financial challenges in its history, as Americans send fewer and fewer letters.
Ms. Brennan, 52 years old, says the solution is hard work and competition—…..
For starters, the Postal Service can continue to evolve and operate more like a private-sector business….,
That delivery network allows the agency to compete with rivals United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. , as well as to team up with them to deliver packages from local post offices to residential doorsteps. It also means that the agency can do same-day deliveries, such as in a test program for early-morning grocery deliveries it launched in San Francisco this summer with Amazon.com Inc.
Over the course of four years, she led the agency’s restructuring of its network, reducing the number of mail-processing centers by about a third to 318 in response to declining mail volume and saving the agency nearly $900 million annually. The agency also added new equipment to help with its booming package business, including hand-held scanners to improve package tracking.
To expand both mail-advertising and package offerings, she says the agency will continue to invest in a targeted way, despite being short on cash. Much of that will go toward continuing to update a network designed for letters, not packages. The agency is currently bidding on vehicles to replace some of its aging fleet—about 140,000 vehicles are more than 20 years old.
The Postal Service, which had revenue of $67.8 billion in the year ended Sept. 30, must pay its own way—it doesn’t receive any direct taxpayer subsidies. The agency has pushed for legislation to allow it more flexibility to act like a business, something Ms. Brennan supports.
Experts caution that it is unlikely a lame-duck Congress will pass such legislation soon. And Ms. Brennan’s first major challenge will come shortly after she takes the reins in February, when she has to negotiate new contracts with the agency’s unionized workforce.
Outgoing Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe, who said he is retiring in part because of the coming labor negotiations, has said he thinks Ms. Brennan will end up as “the greatest postmaster general ever.”
See more at Wall Street Journal
want to act like a Fortune 500 Company……..cut your 100,000 uneducated, low IQ po mismanagers down to 20,000 and require a Master’s Degree in Business from a top 10 Business School. (of the 45 PO Vice-Presidents how many have a college education, answer one)
what kind of weed is this broad smoking……she only got the job becauseshe was joined at the hip with Donehoe……..this one is going to be like the captain on the Titanic…..I can see her gone in 2 years “to spend more time with family”.
act like the private sector, get real, the private sector would college grads with degree’s in logistics, marketing and any other position that in the private sector that would require a degree, not in the post office, you can come in the post office as a janitor (love them) and move up the ladder and become an area manager with a high school education (I love school) and no college degree. She was a letter carrier for one year, and now her monkey ass tells us how to carry mail. The POTUS should replace her and her board with real life city letter carriers, we are on the front lines, not some dam desk fools. Frack them and the horse they rode into town with. She is setting up the place to turn over to the private companies.
It’s about time…!
Could someone tell what the J. in Megan J. Brennan stands for. Thank you.
It is sad my fellow bloggers, act like a business and then pay competitor UPS more than 300 million dollars to fly your mail. Pay FEDEX hundreds of millions of dollars to transport mail. Pay Pitney Bowes to presort mail. A private company would not keep their competitors in business like that. I think, however they mean when it comes to Union contracts they are going to act like a private company and STICK IT TO postal workers.
She can try to stick it to us,ultimately, the next labor contracts will be decided by arbitrators.
Hey, Megan, about that huge credit card bill you piled up???
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Lets act like the private sector. We won’t deliver anyplace that is not profitable. Works for me.
I agree, let’s stop subsidizing standard mail to the tune of hundreds of millions and possibly billions of dollars a year. Let big mailers “Do it on their own” and pay their own way.
In the private sector they FIRE incompetent executives!
In the private sector cronyism and nepotism are not core organizational principles.
In the Private sector they downsized everyone during the 08 recession.
The Private companies that are worth their stock, know the dead weight was
in the middle management. The USPS has entire teams of people that get
paid to “inspect’ routes. Even though they can track our every step.
It is good to learn Brennans true history, never what they want you to really know.
The Postal Service can’t be run like a business because it is not a business it’s a government service!
Well, the ship will keep getting new holes in the hull. If Donahoe is that confident of this bulldog then she has to be as mean as her picture suggests. I’m SO impressed she carried mail for a whole year! I guess she thinks that makes her a real expert on city letter carrying. Shit. She probably started 204-b crap almost immediately after going regular and had relatives higher up helping her climb the ladder. If she started a few years later than I did and went regular quickly for no more than a year she didn’t experience much DPS, no DOIS or other godawful shit we’ve put up with for a long time. Instead, she went in and did all she could to implement the harassment and incompetence.
And she’s the prime architect of the current situation. Well, cupcake, you’re going to find it isn’t all going to go your way. The unions won’t crumble and disappear just because you want them to. The customers will still be pissed and going to their legislators and the media if you continue down the same suicidal path you’re going.
do we really need more people from the private sector we have enough already trying to fire former postal employee’s
Wow, she looks like … for 52!
Visited us at the since closed SEPA P&DC. Didn’t impress me at all with her lack of creditable answers, or any answers now that I come to think about it!
Privatize and die, the historical mission is to bring information to everyone in a affordable service, private enterprise is on a mission to maximize profits, socialize losses, and have tax payer bail outs when their mismanagement fails. Let’s get rid Of Franking privilege and the free mail for blind/handicap let UPS deliver for free.
So… If we are to act more like private sector business, is she willing to tell congress that Franking privillage is to be ended, or the cost of mailing for the blind will be passed on to those immensely wealthy people who get any kind social welfare. There seems to a disconnect between the historic model of what the Post Office was meant to be, and what the neo liberal/con arguments propose. If these private business are so efficient and better than we have are why are they riding on our delivering to every address every day six days a week. I would like to see them set their own goals of daily delivery. They won’t , like every thing else they say, they want some one else to do the work while they continue to privatize the profits and socialize to coast.
This is the brilliant judge of character who selected me for the South Jersey District Manager job! What a genius! Too bad she didn’t know what I was up to!